Well luck has not been on my side lately and once again today I ran into a downfall. I had to remove the water pump on my 1965 Mustang 289 to flush out the engine as the water ports were plugged and I noticed when I removed the water pump bolts that a few were smooth or appeared stripped on the threads. However they were very tight and it took a lot of effort to get them to back out. When it came time to put the water pump back on a couple of the holes were indeed stripped as I can't get the bolts to tighten up again. I tried new bolts and even longer ones to no availability. Is there a fix for this or am I screwed again and have to remove the timing cover and replace with a new one???? Please advise.

 

heli coil

 

Retap the holes is the only thing I think of, but I don't know if anyone would recommend doing that.

 

Some of the bolts go all the way through, you can just put a nut on them. The proper way to fix it is with a helicoil, and you don't have to remove it to do that.

 

Heli coil

 

Just did that to mine. Buy the kit, overdrill the hole, tap it for the helicoil, insert helicoil..life is good again. If you were near by, I would let you use mine.

 

I assume you are talking about the upper holes and not the ones that go all the way to the block? Those are just aluminum threads. Mine did the same thing with an older engine years ago. I just put nuts in behind until I replaced the cover.

 

Actually the bolt that I am talking about is the lower bolt that sits to the right of the lower water pump outlet. There is no way to put a nut on that one. One of the top ones did it as well but I was able to put a nut behind it like others suggested. I was trying to see if there was a way to fix it without removing it but it doesn't seem like that is going to be possible.